Well. Now that the novel is out of the way, I have other projects to attend to.

Next up on the list is putting together a website for my good friend Chris. It’ll be nice to put some time into designing again and I’m particularly excited about the asthetic he’s going for. It’s going to be sort of and 80s color palette mixed with grunge elements and a futuristic interface. Sort of. I am pretty happy with what I’ve come up with so far.

Around the house I’ve got more wainscot to put up plus chair rail and crown molding. I need to get some shoe board or quarter round for some of the rooms and we have a hole that needs to be patched under our window.

I still need to finish a bit of my novel’s story. I won, but the story isn’t finished yet. There’s probably close to another thousand words left. Hopefully I can get that squared away in the next day or so.

We’re supposed to get snow tomorrow here in Greenville, which will be nice. It’s already feeling like Christmas. Thanksgiving break has been great. It’s the first time that Jessica and I have stayed home for during an extended break and it’s been greatly relaxing. We’ll be heading to West Virginia the day before Christmas Eve and then to Michigan on 02 January.

I love this season. Peppermint ice cream, pumpkin pie, Starbucks Christmas Blend… mmmm. Yes. All food related. Anyway. I hope you’re having a great season!

I won. I got to 50k words! I’m still not done with the story, but it shouldn’t be too much longer.

Thanks to everyone who’s been cheering me on and/or reading the story. It’s been super helpful having that accountability to keep writing. And I’ve done it! I’ve written a novel.

I’m excited to do this again next year too. What a great program.

I would also encourage all of you to join in next year. Check out NaNoWriMo’s website by clicking here.

I am SO close to finishing my novel. Less than 5,000 words to go.

I’m excited to finish!!!

Yeah, we actually went out to Edwardsville to get coffee beans at Starbucks. Best Buy had $30 worth of iTunes cards for $25 so we bought some of those for family stockings and whatnot. BUT we also found the two-disc version of Across the Universe for $5.

At Borders we found the music edition of Romeo & Juliet (the Leonardo diCaprio and Claire Danes one) for $5. And then at Target we found the third Pirates of the Carribean movie for $5. So. Pretty good day. And stuff wasn’t *too* crazy.

I still feel bad for everyone that has to work retail on Black Friday. I do not miss those days at all. So, if you had to be in a retail store, dealing with every kind of customer imagineable, you have my sympathy and warm thoughts. You’re a strong person.

Jessica and I stayed home for Thanksgiving. It was our first on our own. And it was nice. I finished the floors in the front room and we cooked food. We decorated for Christmas after dinner (hence the photo above) and watched Holiday Inn which was excellent. Fred Astaire was a fantastic dancer. And I’ve always liked Bing Crosby.

And now, We’re watching The Muppet Christmas Carol which means Thanksgiving is officially over and the Christmas season is upon us. I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving with friends or family. Tomorrow I am hoping to buy a pound of coffee beans and write 7000 words toward my novel. Or more. And watch every other Christmas movie we own.

It’s the day before Thanksgiving and no one is really in the office. I think there are four of us here, which is one more than yesterday. I’ve been working on some navigation revamps for AgapeFest.com and have been trying to do it all in JavaScript.

I suck at JS. If you have any suggestions or help for me, I welcome it. With open arms.

I went with Scriptaculous because it was the easiest I could figure out at the time. But apparently I’m not doing too well at figuring it out. Pretty much I have a <ul> that contains a list of five or so items. These are links to specific pages. Then I have four <div>s that are set to display:none and they contain the wp_list_pages tag set to list the children of a specific page.

When you click on say the “bands” link in that <ul> the “menuBands” <div> drops down using Effect.toggle and the slideDown effect. What I am trying to do is get any of those divs that are visible and down, to close when I click on a different link – say, “info” – and the “menuInfo” <div> to drop down.

Does that make sense? And I’m horrible at actually creating this stuff. I found a few ideas on a Google group, but none of it worked and I don’t exactly understand it all. I’m going to have to get a JS book and read I think. Really learn it.

Gah!

Jessica and I saw Twilight this evening. Okay, maybe I should backtrack. We read the Twilight saga in about two and a half weeks last month. The books were nothing special, but they were at least interesting and moody and a fun read.

I fear movie adaptations of book series because I normally will read the publicated story first. We did that with Harry Potter and we did it with Twilight. The difference between the two is that the HP movies are actually incredibly good.

What I fear from adaptations goes along a thought process. If the book or series is relatively current–and, especially, enjoyable–you only get one shot at making a film that will do it justice. One shot at cinematography, one shot at casting, one shot at having a director that fits. And usually a movie-worthy novel will have to have a perfect match in order to work properly, not to mention a good screenplay.

Twilight had none of that. And it was really disappointing because I look at it and can point out exactly what was wrong. The casting–for the most part–was great. I wish the Bella character had had a higher pitched voice, but the only terrible casting decision was the Rosalie character. In the book, she is supposed to be a ravishing woman, the most beautiful thing anyone has seen. In the film she was kind of heavy, not very pretty, and annoying.

The directing for the film was horrid as well. Edward should have been much more cool, stoic and controlled and not as emotional as played out. The rest of the vampires should have had a much more “bad-ass” tone throughout the movie. And they didn’t.

The overall feel of the film was off too. The book had a melancholy, dark feel and was really “moody”. But the film came off as cheap. I haven’t seen how much they spent on the film but the shots were horrible, the music was atrocious, and the tone of the film was “amateur” and cheap. They spent too much money on the Carlisle character’s bad makeup job and could’ve hired a good cinematographer instead.

And that is the one chance they got. If you sat it next to even the first Harry Potter film and compared them simply on the quality points I listed above, Twilight wouldn’t even compare it was so bad.

The Twilight books as a series were engrossing. They suck you in and, though the first book’s plot doesn’t start for 370 pages, you can find other things in the book to enjoy. The film was repelling because of how amateurish it comes off. An extreme disappointment. I wish I could remake it right now.

…and there is so much I need (and want) to get accomplished by Monday morning. First off, I need to novel like a mad man. I am WAY behind. Just over 50% and only about 10 days left till the end. I’m not sure I’ll have time, but perhaps over Thanksgiving weekend.

We’re going to try and get the floors in the front room finished so we can start some Christmas decorating. We would be able to put the tree up in any case. At the same time, I would like to get all of the trim up in the library. We did a door and a window last weekend but still have baseboards, wainscot and crown moulding to do. There isn’t much floor left, so hopefully we can do both. (I think Micah is still coming over to help out)

I need to make steak & Guiness pie. It’s cold enough and sounds soooo good. We’ve been craving it this last week. But I do need to novel. Both of us do.

We’re staying home for the actual holiday. It’s too long of a drive to WV to do Christmas and Thanksgiving, so we’re giving it a miss this year and doing Cornish hens at home. It’ll be nice. We need a proper break anyway. There was the thought of going to my aunt’s house in Alabama, but that drive is just as far as Hurrican, WV. So that’s out too.

Over Thanksgiving we have a few projects planned:

We need to decorate the house for Christmas. I’m not doing lights outside because our house is too awkward. For one, I don’t have a tall enough ladder to get where I need to to fix the lights to the outside of the house. Secondly, the only outdoor power outlet is at the back of the house. I’m not sure why they didn’t put one anywhere else, but thems the breaks. So no lights outside. It’s nice to have a fake tree when our stationary status is so volatile. The easier, the better I say.

We are planning to just watch a ton of Christmas movies that weekend as well while we finish our novels.

So. Busy I am. For certain.